3 April 2006 - New programme to help get unemployed back into work launched in ten pilot areas
A pilot scheme helping jobseekers back into work is being rolled out across England, Scotland and Wales today.
The Jobseekers Mandatory Activity (JMA) programme is aimed at people aged 25 and over who have been unemployed and receiving benefit continuously for six months. The three-day intensive work-focused course will be piloted in 10 Jobcentre Plus districts for a two year period.
Welcoming the initiative, Margaret Hodge, Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, said:
“We already have one of the highest employment rates amongst G8 and EU countries but we want to do even better – getting up to 80 per cent. The JMA programme will help people identify their own barriers to getting work and what they can do to overcome this.
“The pilot will build on existing measures by testing the effectiveness of the intensive course. I am confident that it will help target jobseekers early and give them the positive direction and support they need to get them back into employment.
"These pilots are an excellent example of the reforms we want to bring to the welfare state - strengthening rights and responsibilities to get people off benefits and into work.
“We want the state to be flexible enough to meet the needs of people who traditionally have felt unable to take up the opportunities that now exist, but equally ensuring that where a person is able to work and contribute they can do so. These pilots will show this approach in action."
The intensive course will focus on the following key areas:
- Confidence building & motivation
- Examination of job aspirations
- Identification of strengths & skills
- Identification of barriers to work & how these may be overcome
- Job search skills
- An emphasis on jobseekers’ rights & responsibilities
- Identification of any training needs
- Routes into work
Each customer will leave the course with an action plan. Jobcentre Plus Advisers will then provide three fortnightly interviews with the customer, building on the action plan and job search skills.
Notes to editors
- The pilot will run in all or part of the following districts:
- Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire
- Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire
- Cheshire & Warrington
- Cumbria
- Lanarkshire & East Dunbartonshire
- S London
- Staffordshire
- Surrey & Sussex
- SE Wales
- West Yorkshire
- The programme was announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in his Pre Budget Report Statement in December 2003.
- The course will be delivered by externally contracted providers.
- The pilot anticipates that 76,500 customers will access the JMA provision.
- The impact of the two-year pilot will be fully evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. This will include information to establish the extent to which the earlier, more intensive support offered under the programme results in increases in customers leaving unemployment, particularly moving into work and motivation, confidence and job search.
- The six-month stage of unemployment was chosen because existing evidence has shown that the longer someone is unemployed the more their confidence and motivation reduces. And this puts them at a greater disadvantage in the search for work.
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